A spoof that goes helter-skelter

October 24, 2008|By Elizabeth Maupin, Sentinel Theater Critic

When Zombies From the Beyond opened off-Broadway in 1995, USA Today called it the worst musical of the year.

To others it was a cult favorite. You can get a sense of both those views in Jester Theater's hit-and-miss production, which looks a little lost on the Garden Theatre's roomy stage. There are belly-laugh moments in Zombies, a deliberately cheesy spoof of 1950s sci-fi flicks. But too much of Jester's production is about trying to turn a so-so musical into something funnier than it really is.

All that trying doesn't improve some mundane songs, and it doesn't help that the actors are too far away from the audience and that you often can't hear the lyrics over the drums.

But director Jay Hopkins and cohorts have created some wacky props -- check out the deadly vacuum cleaner -- and a few swell performances, especially Melissa Mason as a man-hungry secretary in cat-eye glasses, David Almeida as the first human to be zombified and Kate O'Neal as the big-haired Zombina, an alien on the prowl for men.

O'Neal is a stitch, and so are her supposedly female backup zombies, clad nattily, no matter their body type, in green wigs, skirts and tights. With a fashion sense like that, anybody could rule the world.